


Tigers on a Gold Leash

by Ardatli



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - House of M, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Teddy has always been Dorrek-Vell, Arranged Marriage, Canon has been put in a blender and I took only the bits I liked, Easily Avoidable Mistaken Identity, Fluff and Smut, M/M, No Strings Attached, Oops, The Blue Area of the Moon has vegetation because I liked the Cotati aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: William of Genosha is a spare heir, and one thing spares are good for is solidifying peace treaties. A sight-unseen betrothal to an alien, however, was never going to be his first choice. Dorrek, heir to the Allied Kree-Skrull Empire, is just as unhappy about the idea. And one night's chance encounter has the potential to destroy the galactic alliance before it's even begun.Or, this would all have been so much easier if you'd just introduced yourselves properly.
Relationships: Teddy Altman/Billy Kaplan
Comments: 81
Kudos: 252





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From a Tumblr prompt: "I think about Raised Royal Billy and Teddy AUs far too much. Like space prince meets mutant royal, they both have no idea that cute boy was a prince."
> 
> Chapter three has the smut and is almost entirely smut. If you're here for the story and prefer things Gen or Teen, you can skip that one. 
> 
> Many thanks to applenapoleon for the beta!

"The whole idea is ludicrous!” William, Prince of Genosha, younger son of Wanda, Princess of the realm, grandson of Erik Magnus, the undisputed ruler of the whole damn planet —flung himself dramatically down on the sleek, elegant and totally inadequately padded armchair in the parlour that he shared with his twin brother, and let out a deflated sigh. The other people in the room, used to his theatrics, didn’t take him nearly as seriously as they should.

“The peace treaty part, or the alliance-marriage part? Because peace with the scary alien armada that we only just found out existed doesn’t sound like such a bad deal,” Tom replied with a grin that was the mirror image of Will’s own. 

Will and Tom usually entertained in this parlour, at least if you were like their grandfather, couldn’t just say “hanging out,” and had to make everything sound incredibly pompous and formal. On this particular annoyingly sunny afternoon, Kate and Cassie were sprawled on the couch opposite Will, David had his feet up on the furniture, and Tom was amusing himself making fingernail-sized paper airplanes and trying to sail them across the room to lodge in David’s hair. He launched the next one and it sailed, straight and true, for David’s left ear.

David swatted it out of the air and aimed his reply at Will. “He’s not actively selling you off, as I’m pretty sure that’s illegal even for monarchs. You can always say no.”

Will stared up at the ceiling, at the arched white beams that supported the equally elegant roof, and the billowing purple gauze curtains that separated the breezy open space from the garden beyond. Say no to Erik. Yeah, it was _theoretically_ possible. Only-

“You know what the Magnus is like,” Will groaned, ignoring the whine that was starting to creep into his voice. “He’ll be _disappointed_. And then he’ll lecture me for days about duty to family and to mutant-kind, and to the planet- to the concept of first contact, to peaceful co-existence… And he’ll end with ‘think of your _mother,’_ and what am I supposed to do with _that_?”

Kate gave him an exasperated smile. “You’re blowing this way out of proportion, Will. The whole reason you guys even _exist_ is because your mother chose her own husband.”

“And look how much fallout _that_ caused,” Tom replied dryly from the opposite side of the room. His hand moved, too quickly for anyone else to see, and an airplane rocketed through the air to tuck its cone up Will’s nose. Will magicked it away with a wave of his hand, and Tom’s laugh turned to a groan when it rematerialized in his wine glass.

Propping himself up on his elbow to present a less tempting target, Will shook his head, unwilling to be snapped out of his funk. “We’re spares. Uncle Pietro is oldest so he gets the throne after Grand-dad,” he ticked off the familiar list on his fingers, ignoring the look Cassie and David were trading in his peripheral vision. “Then Luna after him. Tom and I are nothing more than handy trading cards for alliance purposes.”

“Correction— _you_ are,” Tom drawled, setting the airplane project aside with the lazy smugness of a guy who knew he’d won something big. “All these years I’ve spent cultivating attitude mean that he’s not even going to try that with me.”

“That’s your solution? I should have spent the last decade disappointing everyone around me specifically to avoid being pushed into a formal betrothal?” Will snapped at him, patience wearing desperately thin.

Bad enough that he’d been called into a meeting with his grandfather that morning in the _council chambers_ , of all places—not a casual sit-down over chess, or a passing chat in the hall, but an actual, serious, formal meeting, with his privy council staring at Will the whole time like he was some kind of exotic specimen. But to be told in no uncertain terms that he was to seriously consider a political match to some… some _alien_ -

And then to get nothing but grief from the people who were supposed to be his _friends-_

“It’s working out pretty well for me so far,” Tom said with a grin.

“Cheer up,” Cassie suggested, her feet tucked under her and a mix of humour and sympathy in her smile. “Maybe she’ll hate you on sight.”

“They. The Skrulls are shapeshifters, right? So why would they have genders? Go with they,” Tom suggested, entirely too cheerfully.

“Fair point, though it’s almost too bad – the whole being-gay thing could have been an easy out if they tried to marry you to a princess. Maybe _they’ll_ hate you on sight. Who’s to say that Genoshans are even attractive to Skrulls?” Kate added, which was probably supposed to be helpful.

“That’s what you’re going with for cheering-him-up? ‘Don’t worry, you’re probably too gross-looking to be acceptable as a royal groom’?”

“Aliens, David.” 

“Ugh,” Will declared and flung his arm over his eyes, shutting out the world. “None of you are any help at all. I should have been born an orphan.”

* * *

Only Aunt Lorna checked on him that evening, and even she didn’t stick around for long. Will braced his arms against the railing of the balcony and looked out over the garden—and beyond that, to the capital city spreading out far below. It wasn’t about the throne; he’d never wanted the kind of responsibility that came with being Magnus. Luna could have it, and best of luck to her.

It was about _respect_ , he decided, and having the chance to choose some things for himself. He didn’t have a choice about the family he’d been born into, or the birth order, or even the powers inherited from his mother that so impressed and terrified the court and privy council. He’d thought—in vain it turned out—that he’d at least be able to have some say over who he _married_.

Okay, fine, David and Kate had been right; he could say no. He wasn’t going to wake up in chains one day and find himself on a ship halfway to another galaxy, no matter how much some people wanted him and his reality-warping magic off this planet. But as much as Genosha could muster a solid show of strength when necessary, alien fleets were a whole different issue. Could he live with the consequences, if he were the reason that a potential alliance failed? That if war broke out, it would be his fault? What was one life compared to so much potential blood on his hands?

“You’re still brooding.” Tom joined him, resting his arms on the railing in a perfect unconscious mirror of Will’s pose. He was much more serious now that they were alone, now that he didn’t have to keep up the front of the happy-go-lucky one. “We could take off,” he proposed, and Will smiled. “Just go—run or teleport somewhere exotic. A deserted island in the Caribbean, or a ski lodge in the mountains. Somewhere they’ll never think to look for us.”

“What would we do there?” Will joked back, leaning against his brother’s shoulder, soaking in the precious warmth. He’d frequently wanted to pitch his twin off this self-same balcony. Now all he wanted was for time to freeze like this, the two of them together against the world. “Raise goats?”

“I was thinking llamas. See if we can breed them to spit poison.”

“Not bad. How about breathing fire?”

“Not with the shaggy fur. Then you’d get screaming llama fireballs, which, come to think of it, would be a great name for a cocktail. Or a punk band.”

Will snorted a laugh, his eyes trained on the stars above them. “If I go through with this, it’ll mean leaving.”

“You can teleport, dork-face. You could be back here any time. Leaving just means I won’t have to listen to you snore through the wall.” Tom’s attempt at a smile was twisted and sad, and Will knew what he meant.

“Maybe she—maybe _they_ will be alright with an alliance in name only. Sign the papers, then go back to our separate, normal lives. I could live with that,” Will reasoned aloud, and some of the tension he felt through Tom’s shoulder began to bleed away.

“So the llama farm is still a go.”

“Throw in a couple of alpacas and you have a deal.”

A shooting star streaked through the sky, stopping in mid-air. The bright point of light flickered in the blue-black night sky, brighter than the stars around it but just as small. Will’s breath caught at the implication. It was followed by a dozen, a _hundred_ more, streaks that burned across the night and turned into stable points, hovering in a cloud-constellation somewhere near the moon.

“That’s the fleet,” Will breathed out, doom settling claws into his chest. “They’re here.”

And then tomorrow, the whole damn court and royal family would be there, meeting their new alien allies on neutral ground, watching Will decide whether he could bear to sign his life away for the sake of politics. He couldn’t do it, not even for Mom; couldn’t promise to become a _sacrifice_ , to live on the other side of the galaxy with people he’d never met and would never be able to understand.

“Let’s go,” Tom said out of the blue. He grabbed Will’s arm and started pulling him toward the door to their parlour.

“What, llama farm? Good, yes, I’m ready,” Will flung back, panic setting in hard and tight.

“No, you idiot. To the moon. We’ll go there tonight, before anyone’s expecting us, and we’ll check out the big Skree-Krull-Jamboree while they’re still setting up camp. Scope out what the big hairy deal is. Then if they universally suck, we bail. It’s like you said.” Tom shrugged expansively. “We’re just spares anyway. Grand-dad will never miss us.”

It was an obvious lie but a comforting one. Will took his brother’s hand, took a deep breath, and before he could talk himself out of it, concentrated hard.

_Take us to the Blue Area of the Moon._

* * *

According to Dorrek’s history lessons, the section of Genosha’s moon that had been designated neutral territory had once been a Skrull outpost. Built as a potential waystation for further expansion, it had been abandoned for millennia following the Empire’s withdrawal from that uninteresting sector of space.

Only now the Genoshans had drawn galactic attention, the awe-inspiring genetically-based powers displayed by their ruling family and adherents launching them not only into space but out of their solar system—and further. Securing an alliance was meant to cleave this young race of super-powered beings to the interests of the united Kree-Skrull Empire. It all sounded great in theory.

Dorrek-Vell, first heir to the throne of the allied Empire, son of Anelle the Martyr and Mar-vell of the Kree, future Emperor Dorrek VIII (assuming his grandmother the Empress, long may she reign, didn’t disinherit him like she was perpetually threatening to do) just wished that traditional alliances didn’t rely so firmly on _arranged marriages_.

Xavin and Karolina had worked out so far, bringing the incredible wealth of Majesdane’s mineral rights under imperial control, but now that it was his own future on the line Dorrek was finding himself less than thrilled. What were the chances of finding a partner as in tune with him as Xavin and Karolina appeared to be? Dorrek was much less adaptable than Xav. Maybe that was the stick-in-the-mud Kree side of him talking.

“What kind of person is this Prince William, anyway?” he’d complained wistfully to Kl’rt, and gotten a canned answer about politics in response.

Empress R’kill had been even less helpful, confirming in a few short words what he’d suspected her answer would be. It didn’t matter what kind of person the Genoshan prince was, as long as he agreed to the match. Once married, the Prince-consort’s role would be to provide genetic material, ensure his family’s cooperation, and serve the Empire—and, on occasion, Dorrek—in all its glory. Pissing off the pompous Kree faction by introducing even _more_ mixed genetics into the Imperial Royal family, well. That was apparently just another huge bonus.

What Dorrek wanted—if he even knew what he wanted—didn’t matter. He should probably count his blessings that the only female-bodied grandchild of Genosha’s Magnus was both too young for marriage and rumoured to be un-powered. Neither trait fit into the Empress’s plans.

Feeling the melancholy start to set its hooks, Dorrek rose from the bed in his quarters aboard his ship and flung a plain cloak around his shoulders. The bulk of the fleet was still in orbit around Genosha’s small and mostly-barren moon, but he’d had his personal cruiser taken down early. He’d wanted the opportunity to feel solid ground beneath his feet, at least for a little while. He should take advantage of the relative quiet and actually do that.

His most prized memento sat in its usual place on the sill by the viewscreen. He ran his fingers over the top of the fist-sized crystal, one corner already showing faint signs of wear. One day, assuming he lived long enough, he might end up eroding it. If his mother were here now, what would she say about all of this?

Anelle had died when he was young, too young, but he remembered enough. And what he couldn’t remember the crystal held for him, in her last recorded message for her son. He knew it by heart, every word of her advice engraved as permanently into his memory now as it was into the stone’s internal memory. _A good king leads by example_. _He honours his people with kindness, never force. Being a good ruler demands sacrifices-_ and there, in the recording, her breath would catch.

Her breath would catch, before she rallied and continued. He liked to imagine that in that momentary pause, she had been thinking about his father. Anelle had made too many sacrifices during her too-short life, for her love, for her people, for her son. How could he betray her memory by refusing his own duty now?

Dorrek forced out the air that was stagnating in his lungs and he kept moving, away from his quarters and his mother’s last communication. Xavin was already in the main hold when he got there, in their newer female-presenting form. At least there was one person whom Dorrek could count on, even if his cousin did have some fairly rigid ideas about fate and destiny. Especially Dorrek’s.

“You look unhappy,” they pointed out with their usual bluntness, though their smile was sympathetic. “Things are weighing on your mind, I take it?”

Dorrek wrestled with whether or not to spill the whole thing, only… no. Xavin was thrilled with _their_ arranged marriage, and had proven time and again that they really didn’t understand Dorrek’s own resistance. “Thinking about my mother,” Dorrek said simply, because that was something predictable and unchallenging as well as true. “I wish she was here.”

Xavin squeezed his arm and nodded. “On occasions like this, the sting of missing our departed loved ones can be far more acute. It’s only natural. She would be thrilled, you know,” Xav went on, heading for the panel to open the cargo bay door. “She would be so happy to see you becoming what you were always intended to be.”

“Sold off to the highest bidder?” The sarcasm shot out before Dorrek could bite his tongue, but thankfully he was talking to Xavin and not someone like Kl’rt. He wasn’t in the right mood for another lecture.

Instead, Xavin shot him a look that screamed ‘I am being very patient with you because I know you are a well-meaning idiot.’ “Embracing peace and diplomacy,” they replied instead. “Grandfather was a tyrant.” _And grandmother is worse._ “You were meant for far greater things.”

“I know,” Dorrek sighed, following his cousin out into the eerie landscape beyond the spaceship. “Be the open hand-”

A flash of something—blue light?—behind a crumbling ruin caught his attention, but whatever it was had vanished again by the time he turned his head to look. Did this odd atmospheric region have lightning? Xavin didn’t seem to have noticed, and Dorrek watched the horizon with a cautious eye.

“Not the closed fist,” Xavin finished for him. “You will _be_ the peacemaker, Dorrek. And you have all of our support in this. The alliance with Genosha will be just as historic as that with the Kree.”

The ship nestled in a valley between two vast ruins, the V-shaped nook they’d landed in opening out into a vast and twining forest beyond. The light was so strange, reflecting blue off of the Genoshan seas, the planet hanging full and gleaming in the sky above. Dorrek didn’t want to talk about his alliance anymore, or the previous ones that had spawned him, or the fate he was going to have to face tomorrow. Thankfully Xavin had given him an easy pivot and, coward that he was, Dorrek took it.

“And the one with Majesdane, oh great prince of peace?” he teased, the non-grass crunching wrongly underfoot. He stopped in the middle of the open space and took the chance to stretch, working the hours of sitting out of his crackling spine. There was another moment of blue glow in the corner of his eye, emanating from the same place as before, just out of sight. Dorrek watched, squinted at the site, but saw nothing. He shook it off and kept talking, but his gaze was more focused now, and wary. “You seem very excited about tomorrow.”

Xavin’s mood was positively sunny when they replied, spinning so that their skirts flared out around them. They hadn’t noticed the light, and Dorrek didn’t call their attention to it. Not yet. “My betrothed arrives tomorrow. Why wouldn’t I be excited? It will be a new beginning for everything.”

“It’ll definitely be a big change-” Going from a long-distance courtship to living together, he was going to say, but movement finally caught his eye. Dorrek whirled, automatically putting Xavin to his back, though he knew full well they would tear a strip off him later for it. Xavin was not the crown prince, not even in line for the throne, and was a very capable fighter in their own right. Logic and protocol meant that they should be sacrificed for Dorrek’s sake. Ingrained habit as the older cousin and protector—and Dorrek’s blatant disregard for any kind of sacrifice protocol—died hard, however. It was a recurring argument he imagined the two of them would never satisfactorily resolve.

Two dark figures startled, then dropped back behind the piece of ruined wall they’d been climbing over and vanished. The same spot where the blue flashes had originated, and now he knew what they were: transportation beams. Assassins, sent to end his alliance before he could form it? Spies for another court faction?

“Intruders!” Xavin hissed, their hand dropping to their side where a small blaster was always concealed.

Dorrek gestured. “I’ll go this way, you go that way – we can cut them off.”

“Not you!” Xavin shook their head firmly. “You can’t endanger yourself that way!”

“If they meant us harm we’d be dead by now. They had a clear shot. Don’t bother the royal guard with this yet, but I want to know who’s watching us.” Dorrek started moving before Xavin could say more, running across the blue-hued field and scrambling quickly up the crumbling building wall. The forest came up to the other side, vines and branches tangling through thick underbrush. He’d never find them on foot. But maybe from the air he had a chance.

Shifting, unfurling his wings, Dorrek beat them hard against the low air resistance of the Blue Area. He struggled initially to gain altitude from moves that would have shot him skyward in Throneworld, but he was determined. The intruders could not have gone far, and now he was on the hunt.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein introductions aren't exactly made, but some bonding happens.

Will knew they were screwed the moment the bodyguard spotted them, he just wasn’t sure how badly. At first the adventure had seemed harmless, a chance to scope out his possible future and get a chance to get a clear head before tomorrow. Sneak over to the encampment, that dazzling array of smaller scout ships landed between the ancient ruins, get a look at the aliens, then head home.

They’d found the heir. Will’s locator spell had guided him clear across the void between Genosha and the moon with unerring accuracy, landing the twins less than a hundred feet from the tall, Black woman in royal robes, and her bodyguard. One translation spell later—that had been it, he realized as Tom zipped them through the underbrush. That had been the mistake that had caught the bodyguard’s attention.

One translation spell later and he’d been listening to the Skrull princess acting all starry-eyed about meeting her betrothed. Him. Only while she was beautiful, regal, and obviously much more mature than he was about the entire marriage thing, she wasn’t at all what he’d hoped.

Her bodyguard, on the other hand, the bodyguard made from miles of sleek muscle and with golden hair…he could get used to the green if it came on a guy who looked like _that_. The guard had thrown himself between the princess and danger without a blink, so he was courageous and loyal, as well as being one of the most beautiful men Will had ever seen. Also, worse luck, a member of the princess’s entourage. Which meant that if Will went through with this, even if the princess was happy to turn into a man for him, Will would still have to deal with having that bodyguard around all of the time. One more injustice to heap onto the already staggering pile.

They had to be far enough away now, the thoughts rocketing through his head in the length of time it took Tommy to cross the area of false atmosphere, and he smacked his brother’s shoulder to make him stop. “Let me down!”

“You think we outran them?” Tom gloated, his grin smug as he skidded to a stop. “Told you it would be a piece of cake. Take us home, Will.”

And he should, should just whip up a teleportation spell and they’d be back in their suite in the palace. No harm no foul. Only…Will looked back at the forest. From their vantage point on the hillside curving upwards toward the barren lunar surface, he could see a winged form silhouetted against the planet hanging low on the horizon. Vast dragon wings, a humanoid shape between them, poised against the sky. Then the shape dove down into the trees and Will lost sight of it—him—them?

“Did you see that?” Will asked, his curiosity tugging at his insides. He took a couple of hesitant steps forward before realizing that he was doing it, stopping himself before he could go running. “Was that the princess or the bodyguard? Is the Skrull princess a _dragon_?” That…was potentially more interesting.

“They’re shapeshifters, Will. They can be whatever. Come on,” Tom insisted, bouncing restlessly from foot to foot.

“You go,” Will decided aloud. “I want to get a better look.”

“And if you get captured, idiot? Then what?”

“Then I’ll zap myself back home and we can apologize to the Magnus tomorrow. Maybe the Skrulls and Kree will call off the match if they think I’m a jerk.” Will called up his power, energy flooding his body in that familiar, potent rush. He waved and Tom vanished, cursing Will as he disappeared. He’d be safe in their rooms, couldn’t run to the moon from there to keep yelling at him, and Will could indulge his growing curiosity one more time before he followed his brother home.

Alone now, he skidded down the embankment and flung himself into the thicket, wending between the trunks of trees and skirting the collapsed piles of ancient stones. He’d seen the dragon over the forest closer to the ruins. If he kept low, cloaked himself in shadows, the canopy of branches would keep him hidden from the air until he got close enough to hear them, see the Skrulls again.

Five minutes in and he was lost in the twisting corridors and narrow alleyways of the ancient city, tangled in roots and vines strong enough to shatter concrete, steel and stone. He paused to catch his breath and his bearings.

Was that a shadow overhead? Hard to tell in the half-light-

A streak of green, black and purple descended from the heavens. The bodyguard, his wings unfurled, dropped on Will like a freaking _bomb_ , a missile of muscle. How had he known that Will was there? He flung a punch and Will ducked aside, the fist whistling through the air an inch from his nose.

He might be capable of self defense, but Will’d never been one to rely on physical combat when his problems could be solved in other ways. He _reached_ for his power, pulled the universe’s primal energy through his body. The guard had him before he could charge up, a large green fist wrapping around Will’s wrist just as his hands began to glow bright blue.

He was yanked roughly into the light, stopping when he was nose to nose with—yes, okay. _Absolutely_ the most beautiful man he had ever seen. Only now, up close, he could also see how blue the Skrull’s eyes were, how young he was, the scattering of green freckles across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Will couldn’t tear his eyes away from the guard’s face, his lips, the strong line of his chin. A big part of that was because his broad shoulders and thick arms were currently employed in holding Will’s wrists tight above his head, pulling Will up on his tiptoes, their bodies bare inches from one another. Drawn taut, everything in him resonating to the man’s nearness, Will’s body began to react in a very predictable and distracting way.

_Forget the princess. How about_ you _run away with me instead?_

Not happening. So despite his half-hard cock already heavy and hot against his thigh, he followed through on his first impulse, his heart hammering loud in his ears.

“I don’t think so,” Will said calmly, a grin flashing on his face as he sent power surging through his hands, the blue glow flaring bright into an electric storm. The guard dropped him and yelped, backing away as he rubbed the static from his hands and arms. Had Will been imagining it, or had the pressure on his wrists in that last second been something closer to a caress? A thumb sliding down to hover against his pulse point? He’d never know, because he’d zapped the guy, and now he had the chance to teleport his ass out of there and back to Genosha.

Only the guard wasn’t drawing a weapon. He was straightening up and squaring off, like he was expecting _Will_ to come after _him._ Those broad dragon’s wings vanished, pulled back into his body and disappearing as though Will had imagined them. The guard didn’t seem like he was going to start throwing punches again, but Will would feel a lot better if he could clearly see what was going on in the permanent blue twilight. He lit up his hands, raising his right one and setting a blue flame in his palm. _All the better to see you with, my dear._

“Who are you?” the guard asked with a hint of wonder in his voice, and Will preened a little from the implied compliment. “How are you doing that?” Will’s translator spell was still working, though there was something else at play as well from the guard’s side. Technology that could do the same thing? Any fear faded, replaced by intrigue.

“It’s just something I can do,” Will said, turning his hand over and back and letting the flame rolls over his fingers as he did so. His wrists throbbed with a delicious ache where the guard had been holding him, and the intensity of his stare wasn’t helping Will come down off his momentary high.

The Skrull guard let out a breath, like a burden he’d set down. When he spoke again it was with curiosity, not malice. Not exactly friendly yet, but a far cry from the way he’d come crashing down from above. “What are you doing here? You’re not native to this moon, and you were spying on us at the landing site. Who do you work for?” His voice ran through Will like liquid honey, a warm tenor that couldn’t possibly belong to anyone evil.

Will shook his head and left the heatless flame burning in his palm. “No-one. I’m Genoshan. We saw your fleet come into orbit and I was curious. I’m—” He hesitated. Introduce himself properly, or hide his name? The guard wasn’t a scary wall of danger anymore; just a man, like Will. Only not, because Will was royalty and the Skrull wasn’t. But _he_ didn’t know that. And if Will didn’t tell him, then he could steal a few minutes just to be himself. No pretentions, no demands or requirements. Just a couple of people having a conversation.

“I’m Billy.” He claimed his childhood nickname gratefully, an identity he’d been forced to abandon by the reams of royal protocol that directed every hour of his life.

The guard nodded what looked like it might be a greeting or acknowledgement. The name he gave in return was a short mashup of syllables that Will couldn’t quite catch, but he tried. “Teddy?”

He was answered with a sharp bark of laughter that would almost have been rude if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of a smile on Teddy’s face, one that pushed all thoughts of conflict or caution out of Will’s mind. It was the sun breaking through fog, a rainbow over a stormy sea, a smile so warm that it reached down inside Will to the parts of him that were lonely and broken and for one brief moment made him whole. The breath knocked out of Will in an instant and it took all the training he had to keep careful control over his face so that none of that would show.

“Close enough,” Teddy chuckled, but he didn’t step nearer.

“I’m sorry for electrocuting you. I’m glad it didn’t take?” Will offered, a concession to polite conversation that normally he’d have waited to come from the other side. But he wasn’t a prince in this moment, didn’t have the standing here to command Teddy’s deference. It was an odd feeling, and a compelling one. Even normal conversations with his closest friends were always tinged with that knowledge of his difference, with sideways looks rather than directly calling him out on his more idiotic moments. Only family got to do that. “Which is pretty amazing on your side, because normally that much power would send someone flying.”

“Yeah, I have wings for that.” Teddy flashed him another one of those grins and maybe Will hadn’t been as careful as he’d thought with his reaction, because this one knocked him half-breathless again. “Your power…Is that what everyone’s been talking about? All I’ve heard for the last few months has been about your people’s strength.”

The Skrulls and Kree had been talking about Genoshans? It made sense, Will supposed. A royal bodyguard would be around for everything, even the incredibly boring meetings. He nodded. “Yeah. A lot of Genoshans have powers. Not all of us, but enough to be interesting, I guess.”

“Definitely that.” He cocked his head and looked Will over in a way that was probably just curiosity, but sent delicious shivers running over Will’s skin regardless. “Other than the lightning and the light, what else can you do? Or is that all?”

Was that a challenge? Oh, now it was on. “I can do _lots_ of things,” Will replied loftily, lifting himself off the ground. His blue glow enveloped him, the security of his magic erasing the last trembling hints of fear. Teddy watched him lift off and Will thrilled inside at the flash of surprise and awe he thought he saw in Teddy's eyes. “Can _you_ fly without wings?”

“Nope,” Teddy said, popping the sound at the end of the word with a grin that Will understood even across whatever cultural barriers might be there. “But I bet I can go faster than you with them.”

“You’re so on. Race you to the watchtower, hotshot,” Will suggested, nodding to the empty ruin that jutted out over the Blue Area. It had been a guardpost for incoming space fleets once, high enough to almost brush the bottom of the dome that kept the atmosphere in. Tommy and Billy had taken it over and held it against Aunt Lorna and Uncle Pietro’s amused assaults for an entire afternoon once, when they’d been dragged along as students to a conference being held in the closest thing Genosha had to neutral territory. It was old but solid, and the view was amazing.

“My translator did _not_ get that last word, but I know an insult when I hear one. Eat my dust.” Teddy sprouted wings right then and there, beating them hard to get lift-off. Dust and grit exploded into the air, pulled up by the air displacement he left in his wake. Will flung his arm across his face to protect his eyes and mouth, coughing and choking in surprise.

Tom would never, _ever_ let him live it down if he lost a race. Will took to the air. Everything he had went into pushing himself faster, skimming through the lower-gravity space with so much less effort than back on the planet. Less atmosphere meant lower impedance from friction and more aerodynamic speed. _Thank you, physics class_.

Despite Teddy’s head start Will overtook him at the halfway mark, burning past at a speed even Tom might deign to be impressed by. He heard Teddy yell, then a hand grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him back. A glance showed him that the Skrull’s arm was a whole lot longer than it used to be, and he was laughing as he hauled Will backwards in the air, far enough for Teddy to overtake him.

_That’s how it’s going to be?_ Will laughed and sent a handful of sparks Teddy’s way; not enough to hurt him, not from the way he’d shaken off the lightning before, but enough to distract him, slow him down just enough for Will to pull ahead and-

And get caught around the waist this time, a strong arm hauling him in just as they hurtled through the empty window that had once spanned the entire front of the watchtower. They hit the ground shoulders-first, tumbling across the dusty floor. Skidding to a stop, Will ended up half on top of Teddy, half beneath him, their legs tangled and mouths uncomfortably, deliriously close. His breath caught, staring into those blue eyes, the pupils that had blown wide. From the sudden darkness, surely, definitely not the proximity.

Because men didn’t like Will this way, not so easily. They liked him for his family’s status, what his powers could do for them, what his position meant for a luxurious and pampered future. Men who thought Will was an ordinary person didn’t wind themselves around him, press their thighs against his groin and his wrists to the floor, or have their heartbeat pick up speed when they did-

_Either that’s a hidden blaster rifle, or Skrulls are_ very _similar to Genoshans after all._

Will’s hips rode up on instinct alone—instinct, desire and a whole lot of reckless abandon. He could swear in that single moment, that breath they passed between them, that Teddy was thinking about the same thing. Teddy’s lips parted with a barely-there exhale, his leg tightening where it looped over Will’s thigh.

The moment ended with Teddy rolling away and brushing himself off, holding out a hand to Will to help him to his feet.

Had that half-second even happened? The way Teddy’s thumb pressed warm against Will’s palm suggested that it had. He didn’t mention it, so Will didn’t either.

* * *

Dorrek was well on his way to breaking every single rule that he’d ever had to live by. He was committed, supposedly; meeting his would-be-betrothed the next day. But all he wanted now was to throw everything to the wind, strip down and plunge himself deep into the body of the man he’d just tackled across the floor. From the way Billy reacted to him, the offer would be welcomed with open arms. And thighs. Only he couldn’t allow himself to do it.

His mother had given in to passion, run off for a fling with a Kree officer, and Dorrek had been the result. Oh, the Emperor and Empress had made the best of a bad situation, using the infant Dorrek as the lever to force the Alliance, but Anelle’s death at the hands of a militant anti-Kree faction had been the direct result of that first, fateful choice. Could he make her death meaningless by throwing everything away? Even if it was in favour of the first pair of caramel-brown eyes to look at him like he was worth more than his heritage allowed?

Billy didn’t know anything about him, or the chaos that Dorrek’s very existence had spawned through a thousand different star systems. Taking advantage of that ignorance would be so wrong, no matter how badly he ached.

The moment broken, Billy jumped to his feet, brushing off the dust of ten thousand years from the dark fabric of his slim-cut trousers. “Cheater!” he declared, his colour high in his cheeks and a sharp, bright smile on his face. “Are all Skrulls cheaters, or are you special?”

Dorrek laughed and Billy got redder, but his strong, sure gaze didn’t waver. “I’m sure the Kree would say that, but the Skrull side of my family would blame the Kree genetics right back. Maybe I’m just all bastard.” He meant it as a joke, but these days it hit too close to home.

_Congratulations, Dorrek, you played yourself._

He moved to the edge of the watchtower, a broad flat ledge where a window or a force field had once been. Now it was open to the atmosphere, the ruined city laid out below, the forest beyond, and off to his right, a field of tumbled buildings dotted in between with ships of his fleet. His fleet—what a joke. As though Empress R’kill would ever let him control anything.

Billy joined him, and Dorrek turned when he approached. He’d obviously picked up on the change of mood, Dorrek’s introspective turn, and the laughter was gone. He cocked his head and regarded Dorrek curiously for a moment before he spoke. “…How so? I have a feeling- a hunch you don’t just mean your bad attitude toward losing.”

“I don’t have a bad attitude. You need someone watching your six.” Dorrek sat on the edge, dangling his feet over the abyss. Billy joined him, not crowding but not too far away.

This would be a test. If Billy knew who he was and was just faking his ignorance, what Dorrek was going to say next would surely trip him up. “I am a bastard, technically speaking. My parents weren’t married. She was a Skrull, he was Kree. The in-law problems were complicated,” he made that last into a joke, but he watched Billy carefully.

He didn’t flinch or show any surprise, no sign of recognition. He just frowned, his lower lip jutting out in a way that made Dorrek think about biting it. “There’s an alliance between the two empires now so it can’t have been that bad. Right?”

There was no way that anyone who knew anything about it would ask that question, and Dorrek relaxed a little more. Billy was a Genoshan, after all, no talented Skrull spy here. Genoshans had barely discovered space travel; he couldn’t expect one of their regular citizens to be familiar with the details of the Allied Empire’s inner workings. “It’s why she died,” Dorrek replied, and Billy sucked in air. “She was murdered by a faction who considered her a race-traitor.” There was no way to soften that blow, no way to say it plainly and honestly without also being blunt. The kind of blunt he could never get away with at home, where every mention of Anelle was met with so much outpouring of either emotion or state propaganda that Dorrek could never get a word in edgewise.

Right now, though, he could speak his mind and no-one but Billy would ever hear him. Billy who was so far removed from anything royal that none of it would mean anything. Dorrek was suddenly very glad that he'd introduced himself by his nursemaid's old pet name for him rather than his throne name. Here, anonymous, he was safer than he'd ever been. And all it had taken was half a lie. 

“I’m sorry.” Billy reached out then, bridged the space between them to rest his hand on Dorrek’s. He was warm, his skin soft, no signs of hard labour or a life spent at war. And he had compassion for a stranger who’d decided to dump his life story at Billy’s feet. Dorrek flushed warm himself, the sympathetic gesture so unexpected that he was caught entirely off-guard.

“What are your parents like? I don’t suppose they’d want to adopt an orphan alien?” Dorrek joked wistfully, ducking his head with embarrassment so that Billy wouldn’t see how ridiculous he felt. How vulnerable.

Billy’s long exhale brought him out of his own head, enough to realize that Billy was sinking into his. He’d struck a nerve and wasn’t sure why. Did Genoshans have parents? They must, even if they had creches or hatcheries; otherwise they wouldn’t have a royal family that he was supposed to marry into.

“Tell me,” Dorrek urged quietly when the silence persisted too long. “I unloaded my problems on you, it’s your turn. I made a mistake asking about your parents. Reminding you of something you’d rather not discuss?” There was something unreal about this moment, the blue twilight and the silence of their perch above the planet making it seem like they were the only two living beings in the universe right then, like some surreal dream. A gift, to talk to someone like a real person, and not a living symbol of whatever others decided to project upon him.

“I wish I could say yes,” Billy said softly, and Dorrek had to think to remember what his first question had been. “My dad’s … not around. He took off when my brother and I were kids. He didn’t like the-” there was a breath of a pause, something easy to miss if Dorrek hadn’t been listening so intently, “-family politics. And my mother isn’t well. Not her body, that’s fine. It’s her mind. Some days she’s great, like nothing’s ever changed, and some days… she’s not.

“She lives in a fantasy world, where we’re still babies and our father’s still around. It hurts to see,” Billy confessed, his face drawn tight and his fingers curling into Dorrek’s hand as though he’d forgotten he was clutching someone else, and not the smooth stone ledge. Dorrek didn’t move, letting Billy draw whatever comfort he could from the touch. “It’s hard to miss someone who’s still right there. Sometimes it feels like it would almost be easier if-” he shook his head, hard, dark bangs tumbling into his face before he swiped them angrily aside.

Dorrek spread his fingers slightly and Billy’s slipped between them, his palm pressed against the back of Dorrek’s hand. An exact fit, as though they’d been made that way on purpose. “Feelings aren’t actions,” he said quietly, hoping against hope that anything he could come up with to say would help. “It doesn’t make you a bad person to wish that things were different.”

“Wishing and I don’t have a great track record.” There was a bitterness and ancient frustration in Billy’s complaint that Dorrek didn’t understand and didn’t know how to chase down. He didn’t have the right to try.

Billy’s eyes glittered and he scrubbed his arm across them. When he settled down again, the wet glimmer was gone. “Let’s talk about something else. _Anything_ else. Tell me what it’s like to live in space,” he demanded imperiously. There was an arrogance running thick through him. Dorrek had seen it when he’d first grabbed Billy, assuming he was some hired thug, only to find himself facing off against something so much more.

“In space? You mean like what it’s like to live with antigrav?” Dorrek asked uncertainly. “It’s like living anywhere, only you can’t go outside for a walk without extra preparations.”

“No, I mean—what is it like to be part of _space_?” Billy gestured toward the glittering stars above them. “To know so many other species, be part of something so huge?”

“Oh, _that_ sort of space.” Dorrek considered his answer carefully. He’d never really thought about it as different or interesting—it was just the way things were. But to someone from a system with only a single inhabited planet, whose civilization had just discovered that there wasn’t just life out there, but vast galaxy-spanning empires… it had to be a shift in his whole concept of the universe.

“It’s hard to put it into words,” he said, feeling as lame as that no doubt sounded.

“Try me.” Billy’s fingers were still laced through his, with no hint that he intended to move them.

It was as good as an order, so Dorrek tried again. “You can’t look out there and really conceive of what it means to know that most of those points of light have their own people circling them. And I can’t imagine how small and hopeless it would feel to look out there and think that you were alone. There’s so much possibility, and potential for wonder.”

“Do you do a lot of star travel? Summer vacations must be a hell of a road trip. Just bopping from planet to planet, experiencing everything,” Billy said wistfully.

“I wish,” Dorrek answered, shaking his head. The details of Billy’s question went shooting far over his head— _summer vacation?—_ but he could answer the parts he did understand. Every trip he’d gone on had been educational somehow, tagging along to meetings and summits to see how negotiations took place, how treaties were formed. Not exactly gripping for a child. “I haven’t done nearly as much as you’d think. I’ve had responsibilities that have kept me focused-”

_Why did he flinch?_

Dorrek felt it down through his hand, then the lessened pressure as Billy tried to take his own hand back. He squeezed his fingers gently against Billy’s, then released him so that he could move. If he wanted to. He didn’t.

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t,” Billy replied, that same sadness settling in on him again, one that Dorrek recognized. He’d seen it in the mirror less than an hour before. “That I could just walk away, leave everything behind. Maybe not my brother,” he amended, “but all the rest of the garbage that comes with politics and families and the kinds of responsibility that you can’t just quit.”

“I get you. We love them, and want to do right by them, but it’s so hard when all you feel is-”

“-trapped.” They spoke at the same time, then Billy looked at him and Dorrek couldn’t help the surprised and delighted laugh. “You get it.”

Billy grinned at him. “More than you’d know. Are you the family disappointment as well?”

“Oh, definitely,” Dorrek replied archly. “I’m not enough of anything for any faction to be happy with any of it. Be more like my father and my mother’s side loses their minds. ‘Be more like your mother’—but she was murdered for what she believed in. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“No-one got murdered in mine, but I remind everyone of my mother and what she did, what she went through. I think half the time they’re scared of me and what they think I might do. Sometimes I catch others looking at me like they’re waiting for me to slip up. Go nuts. Break like she broke.”

The injustice of it all sat hollow in Dorrek’s chest; anger for himself, for Billy, for everyone caught in a mess not of their own making. “That’s not fair. We shouldn’t have to put up with being judged for our parents’ mistakes, or whatever happy little time bombs they left in our genetic codes.”

“I’d much rather be judged for what I’ve actually done. At least I’d get the fun of doing it.” Billy laughed, the smile on his face seeming to come from somewhere else for a moment, perhaps a pleasant memory. “It’s easier to be a pain in the ass and get yelled at for that instead.”

It was a tone change that Dorrek gladly followed, especially as Billy’s thumb started moving on his skin, making gentle strokes along the back of Dorrek’s hand; half exploration, half caress. The arousal that had tried to consume him earlier raged back, furious at having been denied. A glance at Billy from under his lashes revealed a sidelong look from the other man that made everything crystal clear.

_Seduce me_ , that look said. _Want me. Make me feel something new._

Or maybe that was the voice inside Dorrek’s own head urging him onward. Billy’s lips called him, the perfect pout not the least bit marred for being pink rather than green, the full bow of his mouth devastating in its perfection.

“Hmm,” Dorrek hummed aloud. He stood, using his hold on Billy’s hand to draw the other man up with him. He followed smoothly, so smoothly, like they were already dancing. “I don’t know if I can see you as a holy terror.”

Billy took the lead now, drawing him away from the edge of the watch tower and deeper into the structure, following the streak in the dust where their bodies had skidded, tangled, met. “You’re not using your imagination the right way. I hear it from my grandfather all the time,” he laughed sharply, his voice changing into what Dorrek realized had to be an imitation of someone else. “‘You are foolish, reckless, impulsive-’ he’s got a list.”

He took the moment when Billy stopped to breathe to move in a little closer, take advantage of the moment when he realized. He tugged on their entangled hands, drawing Billy that last step closer until they were all but touching, Billy’s eyes going a little wider with surprise.

“ _Oh._ ” He knew.

Dorrek could _smell_ the pheromones oozing off him in that moment—the desire, the need, the sheer mammalian _lust—_ and his own head swam with it. Not a chemical attack, but a shared desire that shot thrills up his spine as he sank into the Genoshan’s gravity well.

Dorrek smiled, his blood and bones humming with _want_. “Just how reckless are you?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smutty part. If you're not here for the sweaty bits, come back for chapter four. ;)

“Just how reckless are you?” Dorrek asked. He searched Billy’s face, memorizing every line. The Genoshan had a wry smile, sharp and sardonic rather than gentle and kind, but despite that he’d shown Dorrek every kind of empathy. His eyes were made of stars, golden auras nestled in the brown, surrounding the black of pupils that were currently wide and dark.

“Very reckless,” Billy promised, his lips parting and his eyes resting on Dorrek’s mouth. Yes, oh yes-

“And impulsive?” Dorrek pressed, smiling, every nerve ending tingling with anticip-

Billy lunged forward and planted his mouth on Dorrek’s, catching him off-guard enough that he flailed. Where should he put his hands? Where _were_ his hands? Did he currently have hands?

He couldn’t focus, not when Billy’s lips were on his and sparks were firing off behind his eyes. It was all Dorrek could do to kiss back. Kiss Billy back, as desperately as Billy was kissing him, his mouth hot and slick, tongue pressing between Dorrek’s lips. Dorrek drank him in, hands finally finding Billy’s waist, every point of contact a flame that seared his skin.

Billy drew back, cool night air rushing in to fill the space between them, and a broken little noise came from Dorrek’s throat at the loss of his touch.

“I’m sorry,” Billy apologized, a red colour suffusing his cheeks and his breath coming faster than before. The uncertainty didn’t sit well on him, like he was much more used to being the one in control. “I don’t know how Skrulls do this. I assumed—was that okay?”

“More than okay.” Permission asked and given, Dorrek seized Billy’s hand and tugged him back in. “But not enough. Nowhere near enough.”

The low moan that came from Billy could have been an echo of his own, their bodies coming together, deliberately flush against one another for the first time. Billy was all angles and edges, firm muscle that was entirely, completely his own. Water in a desert, the aurora of a stellar nursery, a hundred-thousand electric sparks prickling his skin—it was impossible to define everything that was in that kiss, even as Billy’s thigh pressed between his and his hips rode hard against Dorrek’s aching cock. Dorrek fought the urge to scent-mark him, suck welts into his skin that would stay on the Genoshan the way they never would on him.

“How much is enough?” Billy asked, his arms looped around Dorrek’s neck and—oh yes, that was an erection sliding hot and hard against Dorrek’s groin, the fleeting seconds of contact too good and so maddeningly light at the same time.

“All of it,” Dorrek demanded, sliding his hands down to cup the tight curves of Billy’s ass and hold him steady. He lanced his tongue between Billy’s lips, claimed him as a prize. Billy opened to him so quickly, so easily; opened to him and invited him to conquer. “I want everything that you’re willing to give.”

* * *

Will hadn’t had an offer like _that_ in… honestly? He’d never had an offer like that. And with the way Teddy was reading his body, how he responded to Will’s cues, took control from him so effortlessly—he was never going to get an offer this good ever again. “You can have it all,” he vowed, and the words hung in his ears for a moment as though tinged somehow with his magic. _You can, you know. We’re strangers to each other, but in this moment you’re everything._

The thoughts screaming through his mind, thanks to the two braincells he had left, were too intimate, too much. He felt naked and utterly exposed, even though no clothing had yet come off. And speaking of naked and exposed- the night wind whistled through the vast open side of the watch tower. “We can do better than this,” Will declared firmly, and pulling himself back from Teddy’s arms, he did just that.

He called on his magic and a tent of white silk and ebony wood formed around them, just big enough for two, tall enough for a man to stand at the centre, with a mattress on the floor piled high with silk-covered pillows. He added a small table, the drawer filled with possibly useful things, and because he was thirsty, a pitcher of cold water to sit on top next to the lantern that cast a warm glow across them both.

Creating a sex nest was probably the most decadent, wasteful use of his powers that he could imagine, disrespectful to the extreme. But who in this tower was ever going to tell?

“You did this.” Teddy turned around in a full circle, his golden hair brushing the cascading silk drapery that made up the slanted roof. He reached up to touch it, then stared at his fingertips as though unsure the sensation had been real. Will stole a moment to look at him, his body gratuitously outlined by the snug fit of his outfit. Purple chevrons marked his chest, vibrant against the black, the arrows pointing directly downward. _Why yes I will look that way, thank you very much._

He was as obviously, visibly as aroused as Will, a thick, hard line pressing against the really-should-be-illegal semi-stretchy fabric of his pants. Will swallowed hard against the rush of need surging inside him at the sight of it, of Teddy hard for him. He didn’t bother to fight the urge to step back into Teddy’s space, run his hand down the firm curves and dips of his chest, down further- Teddy gasped.

“I can do lots of things.” It came out as a promise this time rather than a boast. Will closed his hand around Teddy’s cock, only cloth between it and the heat of his palm. Teddy rutted against him as he claimed Will’s mouth, again, and again.

They stumbled back toward the mattress, not clear who was pushing or tugging who in the frantic race to get clothes off, fight with unfamiliar fastenings, release Teddy’s impressive hard-on into Will’s hands. The bed was there to greet them when Teddy bore him down, Will’s fall softened by a dozen feather pillows. He sank into softness, hardness everywhere above him, acres of green skin and a slick, sure mouth.

Their cocks pressed between their bodies, Will’s already slick with pre-come. He was surrounded by Teddy, his smell, his taste—he bit down on Teddy’s shoulder and rocked against the groove of his hip, thrust up against smooth skin with mounting desperation. Only it would be over too fast this way, too soon; he could already feel the urgency coiling up inside the base of his spine and he needed so much more than a quick release.

Teddy’s hands slid over his chest, teasing out and finding every sensitive spot and cluster of nerves close to the surface of his skin. “Stop,” he panted into Teddy’s mouth. “Teddy, wait, I want to-” and Teddy did stop, right away, rising up to sit on his knees over Will’s prone form.

“I want to see you, touch you,” Will begged, and Teddy gave him the chance. Will took a second to catch his breath, sliding his hands up Teddy’s thick thighs to explore the hot space between them with his thumbs, grazing his fingertips over Teddy’s balls. Teddy gasped, cursed something the translator spell didn’t seem to feel like translating, his blue, bluest eyes fixed on Will.

Will ran his hands up the V-shaped ridges of Teddy’s hips, over the totally hairless acres of green skin. And he curled his fist around the base of Teddy’s cock, the silk-strong tower standing high with the head bumping against Teddy’s abdomen. Uncut, he gleamed at the tip, flushed dark and hard as diamond.

As Will traced out every line of Teddy’s body, Teddy’s eyes and hands were devouring Will’s in equal measure. His touch was rough and light at the same time, the plating on his fingertips turning them to something like claws, and Will shuddered at the entirely new set of sensations. Despite all the coiled strength underneath his skin, the power in his hands, he explored Will as though a too-rough touch would break him, turning his caresses into a burning tease. 

Rising up on his elbows, Will slipped further beneath Teddy’s thighs until he could lean in and take the tip of Teddy’s cock into his mouth. Teddy stiffened, a groan ripping from his lungs. His hands clenched at his sides as Will took him in, slowly swallowing him down inch by desperate, stretching inch. He couldn’t take it all, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try.

Will’s nails dug hard into Teddy’s thighs as he lifted off again, slowly, his tongue working the underside of Teddy’s shaft. Teddy’s hips flexed, stuttered and thrust like he couldn’t help himself, his dark, dark eyes still fixed entirely on Will.

He had him now.

Moments ago Teddy had been in charge, his body driving Will towards—almost over—the edge with reckless desire. But now Will had him in hand, both literally and figuratively, his fist wrapped around the base of Teddy’s hard green cock. He popped his lips off the head with a wet sound that sent Teddy arching back, his head tipped up as he gasped for air. His taste was more than Will had expected: not quite mint, nor pine, but something else fresh, clean and bright against his tongue. He could drown in it, suffocate himself in the smell of Teddy’s skin, heady and just this side of unfamiliar.

Sinking down on him, drawing him in and then lifting off, the slide of his tongue against the underside of Teddy’s cock, the gasps and moans he was able to drag out from Teddy’s lips—he could stay like this for hours. He really could, were it not for the growing ache through his body, the throbbing need that had settled deep inside his abdomen and pulsed harder with every one of Teddy’s cries. He needed so much more, could imagine days’ worth of pleasures to try out if they only had the _time_.

Will let Teddy’s cock fall from his mouth, his lips and chin wet, Teddy’s taste impressed so deep inside his throat that he’d never be rid of it. A moment to regroup, that was all he needed, a second to catch his breath. Teddy didn’t let him have it. The gentleness was there but under more strain as his broad hands caught Will’s upper arms and pulled him forward, half-tossed him to land in a cloud of soft pillows and silk. Teddy was over him in an instant, thick muscled thighs spread wide enough to straddle Will’s legs, arms like tree trunks pressing down into the pillows on either side of Will’s head.

Will laughed, scraped his teeth against the rippling muscle in that perfect arm. He arched against him, wet trails still all over Teddy’s skin and Will’s cock a firebrand against his own stomach. “How strong _are_ you?” he asked. “You could fold me in half. Actually, you should do that. Right now. Don’t be gentle.”

His laughter turned into a surprised and giddy moan when Teddy’s questing mouth found the tendon that ran along the side of his neck. He bit it, a bright spark of not-quite-pain shooting through Will. Teddy’s hot mouth stayed on the spot, sucking in a bruise and then soothing the bite with his tongue.

“If I do, it’ll be in a sexy way,” Teddy promised, with a slow drag of his hips, his cock sliding alongside Will’s. Stars burst behind his eyes and he was ready to promise Teddy anything and everything if only he’d do exactly that, immediately.

What came out instead of grand promises was a tease, the words light as a laugh on Will’s tongue. “I might allow it.” And he slid his hand down the hard curve of Teddy’s buttock, along the cleft there, dipping down between to see what reaction he could get from this glorious man, this _gift_ Will sure as hell didn’t deserve.

Teddy kissed him, another groan on his lips, kissed him with his tongue thrusting deep into Will’s mouth, licking away the taste of himself that lingered there. Will did it again, reached as far as he could, two fingers testing, teasing around that silk-soft rim. A little pressure there- Teddy _growled_ and Will almost came from that sound alone, something so primal that the only thing left that he could feel was empty and raw. He ran his hands over Teddy’s back, his chest, his arms, feeling the slight tremble in them as he held himself up. Will’s other hand found Teddy’s spit-slick cock, tugging, sliding his foreskin up and over the gleaming wet head, back down-

“Fuck,” Teddy cursed against Will’s throat, his hips stuttering as he fucked into the circle of Will’s fingers. “I need to be in you. Can we do that? Will you?”

To have him reduced to begging—Will was about to gloat, feel powerful and _alive_ , only that wasn’t exactly what was happening, because Teddy was looking him in the eye now, still in control of himself despite Will’s hand on his erection and the sweat beading on his forehead.

“Yes,” Will confirmed quickly, his cock jumping between their stomachs at the very thought and coherent speech fading into babble. “Yes, I am very into that. All for it.”

A blink and a handwave and the lube from the table was in his hand, a promise of the kind of pleasure he’d been missing. Only Teddy hesitated, and was that a faint _blush_ running darker green across his cheekbones, where he was already flushed? “Wait. Are you the kind of Genoshan who can be impregnated?” Teddy blurted out, concerned and adorably awkward.

Will, just about ready to start telling himself the worst, all but burst out laughing in relief. “No! No. I’m the other kind. I don’t have the right parts for that.” Did Skrulls? Or Skrull-Kree hybrids? He wasn’t at all sure, but at least if he bottomed he was reasonably confident that there wouldn’t be any risk of accidentally creating an inheritance scandal.

The smile returned to Teddy’s lips then, lips and cheeks and _eyes_ , and Will burned for him. “In that case,” Teddy purred, and stroked his own cock in fierce anticipation. Will seized the moment and rose to his knees, pushed Teddy back on his heels. He obligingly toppled over to seat himself with a surprised laugh. “What are you- _oh_.”

“I want you watching me,” Will ordered, his rational brain entirely shorted out and his mouth running entirely on impulse. Yes, that was a brilliant idea, having that intense blue stare on him as he fucked himself open. He straddled Teddy’s knees and held himself there, above Teddy’s lap and his steadily moving hand. Will slicked himself with lube and opened himself up, one finger, then two, Teddy watching him with unwavering concentration.

“Let me do it,” Teddy commanded, bossiness threading through his tone in a way that made Will want to drop everything and obey, only-

“Claws and my insides aren’t going to go together so well,” he apologized, even though it wasn’t something to apologize for. Teddy cocked his head and seemed to consider it for a beat, then held up his hand. Will watched with a dry mouth as Teddy’s claws vanished, sank back into fingers that looked like green versions of Will’s own, complete with short-clipped nails.

“How’s that?”

“That’ll do-” Will began to say, then the words fled as Teddy replaced Will’s fingers with one of his own. Gentle at first, then more sure of himself, he slipped his finger out and then in again, stroking, _testing_ as Will rocked down on him. Sensation ripped through Will in utterly new ways and he flung his arms around Teddy’s shoulders to balance himself as he fucked down hard on Teddy’s hand. Teddy worked him open, stretched him, went deeper than Will ever could and seemed to find every sensitive spot inside.

It had been a long time and he was tight, tight and sore even with the lube, but Teddy’s patient fingers inside him and the hand on his cock sent bolts of pleasure firing through him. He bucked down on Teddy’s fingers as Teddy closed his fist around his cock, fucking down and forward into Teddy’s hand, then—

He’d only closed his eyes for a second, focused on relaxing and opening for a third finger, and then heat, heat and wet, _tight_ and hot and slick—

Will’s eyes flew open and Teddy’s golden hair was at his groin, Will’s cock now fully encased in Teddy’s mouth. Every nerve ending and spark fired off in all directions in a brain so overloaded with sensation that he was going to fire right past “coming” and into “total system shutdown” in a nanosecond flat.

“Yes yes yes yes,” he heard himself chanting, chasing the sensation, grinding down on the three fingers inside him now, revelling in the feeling of being open and loose, slick with lube. Teddy’s mouth on him was a feeling he’d need to remember in perfect clarity for every jerk-off session he’d ever have for the rest of his _life_.

Then Teddy was slipping his fingers out, leaving him empty where a second ago he’d been full, his mouth gone and cold air replacing the most perfect lips Will had ever known. Teddy’s hand settled on his hip and guided him down. Will sank onto Teddy’s cock slowly, the same way he’d tried to suck him off, taking him in an inch at a time while his body tried to split apart at the seams.

“I can be smaller if you want, if it would be easier,” Teddy told him, hands restless on Will’s body, stroking his softening hard-on, teasing his nipples, finally settling again on the globes of Will’s ass as he took Teddy deeper.

“Don’t you dare,” Will objected so quickly and so vehemently that it startled Teddy into a laugh. Will threw back his head and arched into him, pushing his cock hard against Teddy’s stomach, the sensation of being stuffed full chasing everything from his mind. _You._ His heart beat in the rhythm of it. _You, you, you. Only you._

He bottomed out on Teddy with a rush of breath, stretched through and through, wrapping his legs around Teddy’s back and arms tight around his neck. Teddy groaned low, his hands splayed out over Will’s hips, rocking into him in small bursts that teased and teased and never fully resolved, stoking the ember inside him into a raging flame. He tried to get better leverage but Teddy’s hands held him in place, without a way to get the fucking he needed so badly.

Will opened his eyes and glared at Teddy, who _winked_ , the _bastard_ , and tightened his grip hard enough to leave red marks on Will’s skin before thrusting up into Will with enough force to send the air from Will’s lungs.

“If you can do that then why haven’t you been _doing_ that, you absolute son of a-” Will yelped as Teddy flipped them, the rest of his sentence devolving into curses as Teddy got his arms underneath Will’s knees and brought them over his shoulders. Then he started to move, grinding deep, and Will was helpless against the sensory overload.

He clung to Teddy’s shoulders, fingers wrapping in his hair, their mouths meeting in sloppy kisses that got ever more desperate. Teddy’s hands were busy propping himself up over Will so Will grabbed for his own cock, hauling desperately against the ache, pleasure swamping him as Teddy fucked him deep enough to spear his soul.

The wave crashed over him from every direction. He arched, he closed his fist tight around himself and stroked feverishly, a prayer and a desperate plea spilling off his lips. Teddy bit down on the join of Will’s shoulder and neck and Will came, shooting hot and thick over his own hand, on his stomach, on Teddy’s chest moving above him.

Teddy slowed for a moment, his movements languid as he brought Will through his aftershocks, eyes intent on Will’s face. A desperate searching kiss later, Will urged him on. Teddy chased his own pleasure, head tucked against Will’s throat, mouthing at his shoulder and muffling his cries against Will’s skin.

He pulled out before he finished. Will only had a moment to register the aching emptiness before he was transfixed by the sight of Teddy taking his pleasure. He sat back on his heels, pelvis grinding down against Will’s as he stroked himself fast and hard, the head of his cock appearing and vanishing again in the depths of his fist. Will dug his nails into Teddy’s thighs and Teddy came, bucking and crying out Will’s nickname. Come striped across Will’s stomach, throat and even his chin, merging with the mess he’d made of himself moments before.

Teddy collapsed forward and caught himself on his elbows, gasping for breath. His own heart still racing, Will ran his fingers through Teddy’s hair, stroking the sweaty fall of gold back from his face. Teddy pressed gentle kisses along the line of Will’s hips, then up his chest, the pad of his thumb smearing a line through the cooling mess already turning sticky on Will’s skin.

Will swiped at his face with the edge of a sheet, then gave up worrying about cleanup. Sleepy contentment fogged everything over in their little tent, Teddy settling with his arm draped around Will’s waist, his head pillowed on Will’s chest. Will drew circles on his shoulder with a fingertip, trying to memorize every unfamiliar curve and freckle.

Eventually, euphoria still a warm blanket around him, Will found his voice again. “That was…” he trailed off, searching for any words that could begin to describe how he was feeling.

Teddy lifted his head and met his gaze, a concerned frown flickering across his face. “Alright, I hope. I didn’t hurt you, or-”

“No, the exact opposite,” Will stumbled over his words, trying to reassure Teddy as quickly and thoroughly as possible. “That was epic. Incredible. Amazing. Exactly what I needed. I’d happily do that every day for the rest of my life. Twice on Saturdays.” He would, too. And not just the sex, he realized after the words had escaped his lips. There was something about Teddy, his mix of power and careful gentleness, the kindness that just exuded from him, the melancholy that sat under the surface of everything and felt so achingly familiar… Will would gladly sit and talk with him every day for years to come, to learn everything about this unexpected, unusual man.

Teddy pressed a solemn kiss against Will’s navel, lingering there a beat longer than necessary. “It’s a nice thought,” he said, so wistful that Will almost let himself imagine it.

_That way madness lies._

“But I can’t,” Teddy confessed, catching himself and biting his lip before he said any more. “I have things I need to do, responsibilities that I can’t abandon no matter how much I wish I could.” He joined Will at the top of the bed, settling himself down on his elbow next to him in the pillows, his free hand moving restlessly over Will’s arm, his side, his hip. 

Will nodded, the weight he’d been using Teddy to forget pressing in him again now that the best part of the distraction was over. “I know. So do I.” He had to go back to Genosha, shower Teddy off his skin, and pretend that none of this had ever happened. “There’s nothing I want more than to see you, but it can’t happen again. I have a duty to my family,” _to my people,_ he almost said, but stopped himself before revealing too much. “And I have to keep it.”

Tomorrow he would be back on the moon to watch the Magnus and the Skrull Empress negotiate his marriage with the same royal heir that Teddy was sworn to protect. The thought of seeing him across the room, not being able to look, to touch—speaking to him would be too obvious. No amount of media training would help him contain his feelings then. They would show on his face to everyone, too painful to hide away inside.

Will brushed his nose against Teddy’s, their naked bodies resting together, sweat drying cold. “But I need you to know. If we- ever do meet again, under other circumstances.” Will could tell him, explain it all—but he would lose his composure then for sure and this perfect moment would vanish too soon. “No matter what’s happened, or how long it’s been—I won’t have forgotten a moment of this. Not one. I _wish_ -” but he couldn’t let himself finish that sentence. That kind of magic did far too much damage, even if his whole being was crying out in agony.

“I wish things were different,” Teddy finished the sentence for him, and if Will imagined just hard enough he could make himself believe that Teddy’s heart was breaking too.

* * *

Lying there with Billy in his arms, both of them already making their excuses before they’d even dressed again… Dorrek’s heart broke a dozen times over. He pressed his lips against Billy’s temple, his jaw, the bruise at his throat where Dorrek had bitten and sucked his claim into Billy’s skin.

Only Billy wasn’t his and never would be. Even if Dorrek refused his grandmother’s edict regarding his marriage. Even if Dorrek did the unthinkable and abdicated from the line of succession.

He could. He could walk away and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. _Except shoot me, or throw me in prison until I agree to come back._ It might be worth it. Let someone else have the imperial throne, do the work of uniting the galaxy, make all the hard choices.

But there _was_ no-one else. The Alliance existed because _Dorrek_ existed. Because having a Kree on the galactic throne filled the power void left by the collapse of the Supreme Intelligence, and there was no-one else around with both Kree blood and any kind of right to lead the Skrull Empire. Xavin was royal, but not Kree. Phyla and Genis were Kree, but had no claim on the imperial title that should have been Anelle’s.

It was a mess that was Dorrek’s alone to clean up. And even if a miracle solution presented itself, Billy’s words had been final. He had chosen his family and whatever it was they wanted from him. A decision that didn’t involve Dorrek.

Rather than give in to grief, cry the tears that were gathering behind his eyes, Dorrek rose up on his elbow and kissed Billy again. Billy’s hands found their way into his hair, holding him close. Desire pulsed in him one more time, waking up his senses. His lust grew and he hardened under Billy’s exploring touch, not as urgent as before but with more understanding of what he’d be leaving behind.

Moving against one another, tender and gentle, their kisses were punctuated with laughter and soft gasps from Billy when Dorrek’s fingers found a spot still sore from before. Their bodies joined again, easy and slow, the second round of lovemaking filled with wordless promises that neither, it seemed, would be allowed to keep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The resolution to this ridiculous situation, and happy endings for all!

Leaving the moon, gathering his power around him to teleport back to the palace, was the hardest thing Will had ever done. Even after a second round, and then cuddling with Teddy (for God’s sake—cuddling! Him!) their stolen hours still hadn’t been enough. Not when it was the only time they were ever going to get. They’d cut the goodbye short once they were washed and dressed again, lingering only making it more painful. Teddy had looked back once, poised on the edge of the watchtower, his wings spreading out behind him. He’d looked back as though he were going to say something—but then apparently changed his mind and launched himself into the endless twilight.

Will had watched him go until the black silhouette vanished into the trees and ruins below. He reluctantly pulled energy around himself and disappeared. He rematerialized on the balcony, rather than his room like he’d intended. It afforded him one last, longing look at the moon. Full tonight, it reflected enough light to pick out the garden below. He could stare at the moon and never see what he was searching for: the imperial fleet and the meeting site on the moon’s dark side.

He was a prince of Genosha. He didn’t _cry_. He did scrub his wrist across eyes that itched for entirely unrelated reasons as he turned and crossed the empty parlour to his bedroom door on the other side. He didn’t make it.

The other door slammed open and Tom appeared in front of him in a rush of air. “Where the hell were you?” Tom demanded, taking in Will’s appearance even as he ran his mouth. “I was planning a rescue mission, you unbelievable asswipe.”

“Don’t?” Will didn’t have the energy to tell him off, not when every muscle ached—some more than others—and misery was sinking her poisoned fangs into his brain. “Not tonight, Tommy. Please.”

Tom’s whole bearing changed, picking up on Will’s mood. The nickname probably had something to do with it, a childhood regression that simply slipped out. Tom wasn’t moving out of his way, and his look wasn’t one that could ever be construed as _sympathetic_ , exactly, but he didn’t push the teasing and he didn’t yell at Will any further.

Will started moving, his door and blissful solitude only a few feet away, but his brother matched him step for step. “What did you do?” Tom asked. How could Will be expected to explain?

“Nothing, I just need to sleep.” Before he could open his door, Tom had a finger in the collar of Will’s tunic and was dragging it down. Will slapped his hand away, but not before Tom hooted with triumphant laughter.

“Not _what_ , it’s _who_ did you do?” Tom asked, poking at the bruise developing at the base of Will’s throat. “Not the hot bodyguard.”

He winced, couldn’t help it. If anyone would understand him it would be Tom, and the confession came spilling out as he pushed past his brother into his bedroom. “Maybe?”

“You fucked the hot bodyguard,” Tom exclaimed gleefully.

“Technically I was fucked _by_ the hot bodyguard, but that’s hardly a distinction that’s going to matter.” Will tossed his cloak onto the chair and sank down onto the edge of his bed, head in his hands. “And now _I’m_ completely fucked. He’s-” He flailed with one hand, trying and failing to find the right words. “I can’t do this tomorrow. I can’t, Tom. If he’s the heir’s bodyguard then he’ll be there, watching everything, knowing that I want him and can’t have him.”

Weight sinking the mattress down beside him told him where Tom was, and Will slumped over to hang his head between his knees in dejection. Tom’s hand rubbed a comforting path on his lower back, an unexpected kindness.

“Maybe he likes alpacas,” Tom suggested. The sheer absurdity of the idea, and the visuals that came along with it, were enough to send Will laughing until he cried.

“Sure. Let me go make that offer to a member of someone else’s household. ‘Run away with my brother and me to a camelid farm in the Andes.’ He doesn’t even know I’m-” Will gestured feebly around himself at the hardwood furnishings, the velvet drapes, the silk curtains at his window, all the trappings of a life that he both loved and hated at the same time. Either way, it was all he’d ever known. “I want him, and I can’t have him, and that’s where it has to end.”

“With that defeatist attitude, sure.” Tom flopped over on Will’s bed, his touch gone, and Will used the broken connection as an excuse to stand and start undressing. “Though it’s good to know that you can actually screw up bad enough to leave me as grand-dad’s favourite.”

Will scowled at Tom and wrapped a towel around his waist. “Not funny. You’re already his favourite, _by the way_. He keeps saying you remind him of himself.”

“Yeah, not sure that’s a compliment.”

Banter aside, Will’s chest hurt with a pain that went beyond the metaphysical. Maybe this was why the Magnus never got close to people. It hurt too much when they disappeared.

“There’s still a way to salvage this,” he considered aloud, explaining to Tom’s quizzical eyebrow. “It’s a political match. There can’t be any serious expectations beyond respect. Maybe we can agree to take lovers.”

“Lovers are one thing, but their _bodyguard_?” Tom said, wrinkling his nose. “That’s shitting where you eat.”

“There has to be a way,” Will’s voice broke and he stopped talking, heading into the bathroom and locking his brother on the other side of the door. There _had_ to be. Living the rest of his life with Teddy ever-present but out of reach was going to be impossible.

* * *

Dorrek didn’t have to deal with a nosy brother when he returned to his ship, but he did have a Xavin, and that was probably worse. Not only did his cousin know him in the way only family could, but they were in the exhilaration phase of an arranged match themselves, so _obviously_ the only way for Dorrek to be happy was to undergo the same thing. He loved Xavin, he truly did. No-one else still living had ever had his back so utterly and completely. But in this one thing, their views were so opposed that any kind of reconciliation or agreement felt impossible.

His lips still warm from the memory of Billy’s kisses and tongue clinging to the taste of his skin, Dorrek landed and shifted his wings away. The bay door was still open, a sign that Xavin was worried and waiting. Dorrek abandoned the hope that he could slip in unannounced and unpestered.

Xavin was lying in wait in the bay, lounging against the wall with their fingers on a blaster, the monitor screen very obviously tuned to Dorrek’s emergency beacon’s frequency. That would have warned Xavin that Dorrek was on his way back, the locator blinking a reassuring green flicker of light on the wire-frame map of the lunar satellite’s habitable zone. Xavin’s eyes trained on the darkness behind Dorrek when he entered and, apparently satisfied that the heir had returned without trailing enemies in his wake, pushed the button to close the bay door.

“Do you plan to tell me what happened?” they asked acerbically, dark brown eyes narrowing at Dorrek.

Confess, or not? Lay his burdens down at Xavin’s feet and wait for them to reassure him that he was strong enough to bear them?

“No,” Dorrek said flatly, and headed for the corridor to his private quarters.

Xavin wasn’t about to let him go so easily. They placed a firm hand against his sternum and stopped him in his tracks, levelling that _stare_ at him, the one so intense that it had been known to make even Bel-Dann flinch. Dorrek met it as evenly as he could, shoving the turmoil of his feelings down so far that even Xavin wouldn’t pick them out. Hopefully.

Xavin looked at him. Their nose wrinkled. That questioning look turned to suspicion, then resolved to something kinder but less definable.

“You need to bathe,” Xavin told him pointedly. “You reek of sweaty Genoshan. Among other things. And if I can figure it out, so will every Skrull in a half-mile radius. What are you _doing,_ Dorrek?”

No-one else was around so Dorrek let the mask drop, just for a moment. His shoulders sagged and he could feel his confusion and unhappiness registering themselves on his face. “I don’t know,” he confessed, and Xavin’s hand pressed against him more solidly, a support for him to lean on if he chose. “I just know that I can’t go through with the match tomorrow. Not now. I know we need to get the Genoshans on-side, secure their powers, but there has to be a better way.”

Better than marrying a stranger. Not now, when he’d just had the most incredible encounter of his life.

Xavin leaned closer and pressed a tender kiss to Dorrek’s forehead, much more sympathetically than Dorrek had expected. “Take that shower, my liege, then sleep. You’re in no state to be making decisions right now. The path will be clearer in the morning.”

Dorrek made a noncommittal noise at that suggestion before fleeing to his quarters, the bedsheet already turned down and everything he might need for the morning laid out in proper order on the long dressing table by the viewport. Royal robes in imperial fuchsia and green, his coronet, his gloves—and his sword, polished and gleaming in the artificial light. All the props and accessories ready for the shape he had been groomed all his life to take.

And no provisions made in case he wanted a different path.

Dorrek washed, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror as he passed. What would he see reflected there but a disappointment and a problem? He sprawled out on the bed, looked at his body and remembered Billy on him. Billy’s voice echoed in his ear, and the memory of his scent lingered even after all the physical evidence of their joining was gone.

Time ticked away and the little sleep Dorrek got was restless and broken. Between snatches of half-remembered dreams, he formed a plan. The first and most important step involved Talos, and the web of spies under his command. If anyone could find Billy, learn who he was, it would be the Empress’ Spymaster. There were only so many places Billy could be, after all. A Genoshan of his power surely couldn’t live an entirely anonymous life. _And_ one who knew enough about the meeting to know how to find the fleet, just to sate his curiosity?

If Dorrek had to make a guess, he would say that Billy was a member of the Genoshan royal household. Not a member of their guard; his hands were too soft and skin too smooth for that. But a diplomat, perhaps, or an attaché. If Dorrek were very, very lucky, perhaps Billy would turn out to be some noble’s relative; close enough to power to be an acceptable substitute for the Genoshan prince.

All Dorrek had to do was find General Talos, explain the situation, and ask.

Transporting up to the flagship the following morning threw everything into sharper relief. It was easier to be himself on his own cruiser, where Xavin understood him and the crew were used to his quieter moments of introspection. On Grandmother’s territory, however, crew snapped to attention when Dorrek so much as appeared in a doorway, and panic laced through every undersecretary’s movements, as though they were expecting reprimands—or worse. He couldn’t help but be painfully aware of his position in the hierarchy, and he imagined that was entirely the point.

It made it easier to boss them around and get where he needed to go without interference, mind you. Talos was standing in the centre of the communications hub, a dozen holos and screens circling him as he redirected flows of information to his agents around the empire. He retreated to a more private office at Dorrek’s gestured request, though his eyebrow went and stayed up.

“This is an unexpected honour, your highness.” Talos dropped into his chair as he spoke, casually waving Dorrek over to another one off to one side. Dorrek chose to stand, resting his arms on the seat back, watching the busy hub out the window in front of him rather than make eye contact. “What favour can your humble servant offer on this fine morning?” Talos asked.

Dorrek’s smile curled at his lips at the dry greeting, carefully pitched for the utmost in plausible deniability if anyone complained about his tone. There would be no real bowing and scraping here. “I have some questions,” he began, and rolled his eyes at the sarcastic cock of Talos’s head. “No-one comes to you with answers, do they?”

“My job would be redundant if they did.” At least Talos was in a good mood, and Dorrek felt himself start to relax. Not completely, because what Talos had to say would determine the course of his life from here in, but-

_Not helpful._

“You know what’s happening today,” Dorrek said. No point in making it a question.

“Indeed I do, your highness. Today’s the illustrious day where the Genoshan royal family arrives to meet us on this most sacred ancestral ground, to begin the process of ratifying a peace treaty that has taken _far_ too long to draft. Every bloody hour, more amendments.” He muttered the last to himself, though loud enough for Dorrek to hear and ignore. Talos swivelled in his chair and directed his attention to Dorrek directly, though his pose was still casual and easy. “And there will be some important decisions made about your future. That’s why you’re here, I assume, and not for the exceptional joy of my company.”

Dorrek ducked his head to hide the faintly unprofessional grin, but he nodded, his serious mood crashing back in on him a beat later. He planned to ask Talos to help him find Billy, but first—“Prince William,” he grimaced at the name. “Why him? Whose idea was it? Ours, or theirs?” And how easy would it be to change the minds of whoever had been responsible?

Talos looked at him, _really_ looked at him, and Dorrek was grateful for the chair acting as a wall between them. Whatever Talos was thinking about he eventually decided to answer Dorrek’s question fairly, and he shrugged. “A little of column A, a little of column B. The Genoshan Magnus has three children, none of whom were put on offer. One’s already got an heir of his body, one’s refused to consider political matches, and the last one’s insane.”

“That’s a terrible way to put it,” Dorrek objected, Billy’s visceral pain a vivid reminder of the way words could hurt. _Watching me to see if I’ll break. Like she broke._

Something else started to surface at the back of his mind, a suggestion so ludicrous that he ignored it simply on principle.

“Fine, fine.” Talos waved him off. “Let’s call it ‘unsuited to the stress of leadership positions.’ In any case, that generation was a write-off, so we moved down one. The youngest prince, second son of the Magnus’ eldest daughter, is currently fourth in line for the throne. That means there’ll be no issue with him relocating to Throneworld, or a question of dividing the centre of empire. It’s a better choice than his cousin, the second in line, who will be expected to remain on Genosha.

“Truly, either brother would be a good match. Both have dominant genetic mutations which allow them to manipulate time and space, and both are known to have taken male-bodied lovers, which would accommodate your preferred shape. But the elder of the two, so I’m told, is… less predictable than the younger one. More belligerent and known to have a problem with authority.” Talos seemed to find that immensely funny, his green eyes laughing at Dorrek from across the room.

“So he wouldn’t be useful to the Empress, is what you’re saying,” Dorrek straightened his back and folded his arms across his chest, his cloak comforting in its weight across his shoulders. He could hide in there if he needed to; hide behind the persona it presented on the outside.

“Ehhh,” Talos waggled his hand back and forth in the air. “To be honest, my spies aren’t convinced that the other prince is particularly malleable either. He simply seems to be less—what’s the word. Openly obnoxious about it.” He seemed to find _that_ funny as well, and Dorrek couldn’t pin down why. 

“You’re not selling me on this, Talos.”

“I didn’t realize that I had to, your highness.” _That_ was snarky, and Dorrek huffed a soft laugh in reply. “Tell you what,” Talos continued. “Why don’t you see for yourself?” He made a gesture at the screen in front of him and it activated. A moment later he’d pulled up a dozen different news feeds and files, scattering them in the air across the front of the room for Dorrek to peruse. Another command and the unfamiliar shapes resolved themselves into letters Dorrek could read, barring a few that scrambled, reformed, then settled on phonetic transcriptions instead.

Dorrek wasn’t paying attention to the words, his eyes fixed on the images that flickered past his face at a rapid pace until he flung out a hand to stop them. “No,” he murmured, forgetting about Talos watching him, about Xavin waiting for his return, about everything except the picture in front of him. “No, that _can’t_ be right.”

Billy. It was _Billy_ , dressed in a formal Genoshan style, caught by the photographer in a moment of motion. He turned, half-looking at the camera, dark hair falling across his brow. A man identical to him in every way except for white hair walked behind him and just off-side, hands slightly blurred as though he were gesturing quickly as he spoke. The image had been taken in an unfamiliar great hall, the floor carpeted in red, the hanging banners in the background bearing the seal that Dorrek had seen on the bottom of so many documents recently.

He _was_ part of the royal household, that was Dorrek’s first thought, his heart lurching and stomach coming unmoored, turning circles inside his abdomen. And Dorrek’s memory hadn’t lied; Billy was just as beautiful as he’d been the previous night. More so, in a perfectly tailored suit, a red cowl draped over his shoulders, some kind of ribbon—a marker of state?—pinned to his chest.

Dorrek’s hands clenched at his sides, the chorus of _maybe maybe maybe_ running wild through his mind. There was a headline attached to the image and he tried to read it aloud, some of the words unfamiliar even in translation. “What does that caption say? _Billy and Tommy, the Royal Glow-up_? What does that mean?”

Talos shrugged expressively. “Our translators are having a difficult time with the words “glow-up,” but the associated briefing appears to be praising the level of attractiveness the princes achieved during later pubescence. Monoforms often place outsized importance on that kind of metric, considering that the effects of maturity appear to be fairly random.” He was watching Dorrek now, that amused smile apparently permanently etched into his face. What did Talos know that Dorrek didn’t?

“The _princes_?” Dorrek asked, abandoning his questions about Talos in favour of much more important things. Dorrek struggled with his words, everything deserting him except for Billy’s lean form, the silk-soft hair Dorrek had swept away from his face, the lips he’d pressed kisses to over and over again—“That’s _them_? But I thought…I thought the prince was named William,” he trailed off dumbly.

“‘Billy’ is a common Genoshan diminutive for that name. It doesn’t make much sense, I grant you. ‘Willy’ would be a better version if you simply _had_ to add an ‘ee’ sound, but there you go.”

Dorrek sat. His knees gave out underneath him and he simply sat, almost missing the chair. The man in the watchtower, with the galaxy eyes and the perfect mouth, whose body had been one with his less than twelve hours before, who’d kissed him through to his soul and almost wept when he spoke about duty and sacrifice and loneliness— _that_ was the man all but officially promised to Dorrek in marriage?

He could barely breathe, struggling to pull enough air into his lungs.

“Is everything all right, your highness?” Talos asked solicitously.

It took a long few seconds before Dorrek felt steady enough to reply. He drew in a breath and his lungs accepted it this time. “Yes. Everything is extremely alright.” It was. Everything was going to be fine. More than fine. If he didn’t mess this up, the rest of his life was going to be _fantastic._

“Now.” Dorrek exhaled, turning to face General Talos. “Brief me about him and his family. When they arrive I need to make them feel as welcome as possible.”

* * *

Will had fallen into a deep, unhappy sleep, the kind that took too long for an alarm to penetrate. He debated with himself whether or not to stay in bed, build a fortress beneath the covers and make the walls impenetrable, just for fun. He’d like to see any of them try to drag him out of _that_.

Only his grandfather would probably be able to do it, and then he’d have to face both reality _and_ the Magnus’ disapproval. Will reluctantly got up instead and dressed as though in a fog, his valet bustling around him doing up his buttons and pins while Will stared into his own eyes in the mirror and tried to recognize the man standing there. He only batted the help away when the valet advanced with hair crème and a brush. Everything else was tying concrete blocks around his heart, every layer of regalia another weight sinking him into the darkness of his own mind; at least his hair should be able to breathe.

The coronet was apparently a non-negotiable this time, the silver-chased filigree glinting against the black of his hair as it was settled into place. Tom’s was gold, both a signal to their birth order and an attempt to make it show up against his white hair. As if Will’s thoughts had summoned him, his twin appeared in the door of Will’s room. Tom had apparently let the servants at his hair today as it had been slicked back under the gold coronet, just a little too long these days and the ends brushing against the collar of his jacket.

“Well, don’t you look dashing,” Tom drawled, and Will got ready to punch him. “A regular Prince Charming.”

“Shut up.” Will dismissed the fussing servants with a grim nod and waited until he and Tom were alone before tipping forward slowly. Tom was in front of him before Will could fall over. Will ended up with his face buried in Tom’s shoulder, as he’d anticipated.

A beat held, with Tom’s arms coming around him, and a moment later Will hugged him back.

“Ready?” Tom murmured softly, now that there was no-one but Will to hear.

“Not in the slightest.”

They went anyway.

It was all very dramatic, but the Magnus of Genosha was not known for doing anything quietly. They made ready to teleport up in a group, the Magnus, Pietro, Lorna, and the twins, along with double that number of guards, courtiers and members of the Privy Council.

_Will mother be coming?_ Will had asked when she hadn’t joined them in the council chambers. Pietro had only shaken his head and clenched his teeth, that tell-tale jumping of the muscle in his jaw enough of an answer. She was having a bad day.

She had a lot of bad days.

He had his aunt and uncle with him at least, as well as Kate and David as representatives of the princes’ court. The ones who could be trusted to behave themselves at formal events. In the moments they had to arrange themselves appropriately for the Magnus’ favourite sort of grand entrance, Will had to put up with Kate’s gentle teasing and David’s attempts at empathy, while Aunt Lorna argued with both Pietro and the Magnus in the background. Will only caught bits and pieces of his aunt’s rant, interspersed with the Magnus’s more indistinct replies, but what he did hear made him smile.

“I can’t believe you even asked this of him-”

“Because he’s a _kid_ and he wants to please you, that’s why he’d agree!”

“—I said what I said.”

“Llama farm,” Tom offered. “Just say the word.” He rested his hand on Will’s back as Lorna and their grandfather finished their argument and started back toward the group, Lorna still fuming and the Magnus… looking slightly chagrined, which was unusual for him. Especially in semi-public. 

“Don’t tempt me,” Will muttered, his teeth gritted.

“William.” Erik Magnus, ruler of Genosha, turned to his grandsons and extended a gloved hand to Will. His expression softened, and Will found himself taking the offered hand out of surprise and a very well-trained-in need to obey his grandfather. His king. “You should know that if the arrangements prove… unacceptable, we will not proceed. Your happiness matters, and as your aunt has very thoroughly chastened me, I have not been as explicit as I should have been about your choice in these events.”

Will gaped, managing only after a horrifying minute to remember to close his mouth. “I, er. That is. Sir. I understand the importance of today to the treaty.” He squared his shoulders, taking what felt like his first moment to breathe in weeks. “Do you think it would destroy everything if I needed a few days to make a decision?”

The Magnus shook his head, and in a move that had Will questioning his own grasp on reality, pulled Will in for a hug that was as firm as it was brief. “It will not. I’ve made many mistakes with my own children,” the Magnus admitted quietly. “I do not wish to do the same with my grandchildren. Now.” He backed off and cleared his throat to address his counsellors, leaving Will and Tom equally flabbergasted.

“You think if I asked him right now about dating David officially, he’d go for it? Since you’ve softened him up and all,” Tom muttered into Will’s ear.

“Don’t push your luck.”

The signal was given and Will drew on all the power he possessed, to gather the sizeable group and send them across the two hundred thousand miles of open space between home and his fate.

The group resolved into solid flesh and Will let go of his magic, the familiar blue light slipping away. He’d brought them to the courtyard indicated on Allerdyce’s map, and it was already filled with people. It was better lit than the rest of the Blue Area, a warm glow coming from beyond the archways at the other end of the enclosed space. Aliens had already arrived: green, blue and pink-skinned, dressed in versions of what looked like livery from different orders, though Will couldn’t begin to guess at what planets, factions or species all of them represented.

Conversation had obviously stopped around the courtyard when the Magnus and his court appeared in the middle of everything. The Magnus stood in front, flanked by Pietro and Lorna, Will and Tom, hands clasped at their backs, standing at the centre of the second line. Their retinues fanned out behind them, blocking off a secure perimeter with force of presence rather than weaponry. This was supposed to be a friendly meeting, after all. The ratification of this new galactic peace.

The formal announcements began, the herald crying their names and titles to all and sundry, and Will took the opportunity to scan the crowd. He was looking for one familiar face in particular, one set of piercing blue eyes.

He saw another one instead, less familiar and less welcome, but one that he would apparently have to make peace with. The woman from the garden stood with the crowd, but she didn’t wear a crown. Or any obvious sign of rank, actually, beyond a starburst pin at her shoulder that held a delicate fall of a silken cape. She turned to murmur something into the ear of the woman on her arm, a lithe blonde who bent her head in to listen, then brushed a kiss against her companion’s lips.

“Isn’t that supposed to be _your_ future wifey?” Tom muttered, exchanging confused glances with Will.

“Maybe it’s a good sign. If she’s got a girlfriend, she can’t possibly get pissed at me for finding a boyfriend,” Will whispered back, a little bit of hope making the concrete weight in his stomach less painful.

“Fingers crossed.”

There was a pause, a faint surge of energy that left prickles along Will’s arms, then figures resolved themselves in the backlit arches across from them. He’d been naïve in imagining his grandfather to be unique in his love for making an entrance; it seemed like the Skrull Empress had the same idea. Guards filed in, their armour blazoned with the same emblems Will had seen on Teddy’s uniform. A blare of music followed from somewhere nearby, not quite trumpet-like but similar, and two more Skrulls walked towards them out of the light.

The Empress was in front, of course, long green hair flowing from underneath a purple diadem, her purple gown swirling around her legs as she walked. She had to be at least the same age as the Magnus, if not older, but Will would never have guessed it to look at her. She exuded the same sort of power and ruthless competence, and he had no difficulty imagining her on her throne, guiding the politics of an entire galaxy.

At her right hand, following two steps behind—

Will lost his words. The world around him got very dark except for the man standing in the light. His beauty eclipsed everything, golden hair caught back in a purple jewelled coronet, his skin-tight black outfit chased with narrow bands of purple. A green and a purple cloak sat on his shoulders, two layers of fabric billowing out behind him as he strode into the courtyard. He searched the crowd for something, for someone? And his eyes fell on Will as the herald began to cry out his name.

“And rise to attend Dorrek-vell, first heir to the throne of the allied Empire, son of Anelle the Martyr and Captain Mar-vell. Scion of the Skrulls, Lord among the Kree, called Peacemaker.”

“Oh shit,” Will whispered.

“ _Not_ a hot bodyguard.” That was Tom beside him, similarly stunned.

“Nuh-unh.”

“Oh boy. This is gonna be good.”

Lorna stepped back and took Will’s arm to get his attention. He snapped back into focus and realized that almost everyone was staring at him now, waiting for him to make a move. “You don’t have to do this,” Aunt Lorna reassured him, but that moment was long past.

Will squeezed her hand and gave her a smile that was mostly relief, with a huge hit of excited anticipation. “No, it’s okay.” He drew in a steadying breath and nodded at her. “I think…I _know_ I’m going to be fine.”

Will let go of his aunt and stepped forward, drawn like a magnet along the path outlined in ancient mosaic tile. Teddy— _Dorrek—_ was doing the same, his entire being fixed on Will. Murmurs and conversation rippled through the assembly and Will didn’t care. Teddy was in front of him, staring at him like he was something wonderful and precious, and Will only had to reach out to touch him and claim his destiny.

So he did. He extended his hand and Dorrek, the _heir_ , the prince, future ruler of an entire galaxy, took Will’s hand in his, and brought it to his lips for a kiss. It was ridiculously formal, a gesture from hundreds of years ago that somehow felt exactly right. Dorrek’s warm lips brushed the back of Will’s hand, every point of contact setting off a thousand sparks, his blue eyes laughing the entire time.

Will had to say something, anything, put himself into the moment the way Dorrek’s kiss had staked his own claim. “It’s you,” was all that came out, a quiet and private murmur in the middle of a ring of a hundred watchful eyes.

“It’s me,” Dorrek answered, looking as giddy as Will felt, his smile growing and their hands locked together between them long after the polite moment to let go had passed. “And it’s _you-_ I didn’t know. I swear to you, I only found out who you were this morning. Even then I barely believed it.”

Will’s heart swooped and dove, spinning in the blissful circles he wasn’t allowed to show on the outside. Not to anyone but Dorrek, who could surely see all of it in his eyes and in his smile, in the way he couldn’t break their locked gazes for anything. “You’ve got a head start on me, then. I assumed…” Will trailed off, a warm flush rising to his cheeks. “When I saw you with your companion in the garden last night. I thought she was the heir. You protected her like a bodyguard—”

“Xavin?” Dorrek laughed with delight and shook his head. “No. Xav’s my cousin. And they’re already betrothed, part of the Majesdane alliance. The whole time, you assumed I was a _bodyguard_?”

Will’s flush continued to rise, and he coughed to clear his throat. “In my defense, your muscles are incredible. It’s not hard to imagine. And _you_ assumed I was a spy, which I don’t think is much better.”

“I revised that to ‘diplomatic corps’ before Talos showed me the news clippings with your picture,” Dorrek began to explain, then looked over Will’s shoulder and stopped talking. The rulers were converging on them, the Magnus and the Empress approaching from opposite directions. Dorrek didn’t drop Will’s hand but loosened his hold enough that Will could twist his grip and lace his fingers through Dorrek’s. His hand was back to what must be his natural claw-form, the texture of his armour plates increasingly fascinating under Will’s fingertips.

Empress R’klll was the first to join them, her gaze shrewd and evaluating, giving Will the feeling of being a bug under glass. When she spoke, she spoke to Dorrek. “I assume—given your total lack of attention to decorum and protocol—that you’re satisfied, grandson?” the Skrull Empress asked, her voice silvered and serpentine. Will instinctively wanted to put himself between her and Dorrek, all his protective instincts flaring. Dorrek squeezed his hand in what might have been a warning, and made a half-bow to his grandmother.

“Completely,” he replied smoothly, then glanced at Will as though he were asking permission for something. The Magnus was watching Will’s reactions with an expression Will couldn’t read. Amused, maybe; surprised, definitely. Pleased? There was always hope there.

“With your permission, Grandmother, Magnus,” Dorrek continued, “we would like some time to speak privately. There is a garden of sorts beyond the wall, if we may take your leave.” And he squeezed Will’s hand again before letting it go.

“William?” Will’s grandfather asked, and Will nodded.

They didn’t know each other nearly well enough to have developed any kind of understanding or code, but the signal for ‘trust me’ seemed to be pretty universal. Either that or Will had decided to take a massive leap of faith based on nothing more than Dorrek’s eyes, the kindness that seemed to exude from his pores, and the way he’d made Will’s body sing.

There were worse ways to begin a relationship.

“What he said. It’s a big decision. We need some time to get acquainted.” There was a faintly muffled snort from beside him and Will didn’t need to look to know that Dorrek would be fighting a smile.

“Then I have no objections,” the Magnus said, arching an elegant white eyebrow at R’klll.

“Nor I. Take-” the translation garbled for a moment before it settled on- “half an hour, then join us on the command deck.”

Half an hour—there was any wonderful number of things that they could accomplish in half an hour, and all of them technically could be filed under ‘getting acquainted.’ Will waited a moment until they were formally dismissed, then fell in step beside Dorrek. The treeline was just beyond the arches, an old wall running alongside. They made for that, Will easily keeping pace with Dorrek’s long strides. Once they were out of potential earshot Will stole a glance at the man beside him, and grinned.

“So how much of our half hour were _you_ planning to use for conversation? Just out of curiosity.”

Dorrek huffed a laugh, and when he looked at Will, the smile was spreading wide across his wonderfully expressive face. “If we talk fast we can probably get the really important things out of the way quickly. Assuming you’re up for it,” he added, a hint of smugness threading its way through his concern. “You were limping a little in the courtyard.”

Will ducked around the cover of the wall, and, once sure that they were out of view of the assembly and the ship beyond, grabbed Dorrek by the edges of his cloak. Will backed up until his shoulders struck the wall and gave him something to lean against, then pulled Dorrek in close. “Yeah, well. I’m still sore from yesterday. Can’t imagine why,” Will purred, low and throaty, and was rewarded by the sight of Dorrek’s eyes going wide, his hands flattening against the wall on either side of Will’s head.

“I’d apologize, but I’m not actually sorry. About any of it.” Dorrek bent his head to kiss Will and Will kissed him back, arms sliding around his neck. There was no guilt this time, no desperation, no lingering knowledge of imminent loss. Just heat, heat and strength, and the new, blinding and all-encompassing feeling of coming home.

“It won’t always be this easy,” Dorrek murmured against his skin some time later, body sated and mouth pressed gently to the strip of skin above Will’s trouser waist where he’d tugged Will’s shirt free. “We’ve still got so much to figure out. I need to understand your culture, you have to learn Skrull and Kree history—biology! I only have a vague idea how Genoshan bodies work. And political logistics—who will be on our court, when you’re going to come to Throneworld—” He rested his forehead against Will’s chest as though overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

“I’ll tell you what my first demand in the marriage contact is going to be,” Will teased him and Dorrek lifted his head, a hesitant frown trying to settle in. “I want my own _spaceship,_ ” Will finished dreamily. “If I’m marrying a galactic overlord, that’s got to be one of the best perks.”

Dorrek laughed, everything relaxing again, and he nuzzled under Will’s chin. “That won’t be a problem. I assume that means you’re willing to go through with the treaty,” he asked after a moment, lips hot against Will’s skin like he could somehow convince Will to stay through sexy bribery.

It would have worked very well, if Will had still had any lingering doubts. As it was—“I am if you are.”

Will stroked his fingers through Dorrek’s hair, tracing gentle circles across his scalp. Dorrek all but purred, leaning into the caress. The wall wasn’t particularly comfortable as a place to savour an afterglow, but the company more than made up for it. They’d used about half their time, had a little less than a quarter of an hour to start hammering out the finer details of their future lives, but for once, Will was in no rush. “This part will always be easy.” Will disagreed softly, pressing a kiss and a promise against the top of Dorrek’s head. “Everything else, we can work on as it comes.”

* * *

“Hang on, wait. Go back a second. You’re saying that any kids we have will hatch from _eggs_?”

“Yes? Unless you’re actually able to gestate and want to carry them yourself—”

“…Eggs will do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for indulging me in this silliness. I had a blast working on it, and the reception it's gotten has reminded me why I love this fandom so much.
> 
> Come play with me on Twitter at [@JennetAlexander](https://twitter.com/JennetAlexander), or on Tumblr at [ardatli.tumblr.com!](https://ardatli.tumblr.com/)


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